5523 




1 



ADDEESS 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 



MONTGOMERY COUNTY AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY 



AT THEIR 



ANNUAL EXHIBITION 



HELD AT 



SPRINGTOWN, OCTOBER 7th, 1859, 



Sidney Greorge Fisher, 

OF PHILADELPHIA. 



..^.. > L tf 



PUBLISHED BY ORDER OF THE SOCIETY. 



PHILADELPHIA: 
JAMES B. CHANDLER, PRINTER, 306 & 308 CHESTNUT STREET. 

1859. 



• ~ •» 



< 






ADDEESS 



Again the mellow autumn months have come. The harvest is 
over. The crops have been gathered or are matured, and the 
result of the year's labor is known. It has been a bountiful season 
in all the fruits of the earth. The country throughout its wide 
borders has been blessed with plenty, and the toils of the farmer 
have drawn from the soil wealth, which has revived the drooping 
energies of all other pursuits and inspired confidence in a prosperous 
future, after a period of calamity and depression. The toils of the 
farmer; the commerce, the manufactures, the varied business of 
the nation, depend upon him. 

I was glad to receive the invitation of "The Montgomery County 
Agricultural Society," to meet you here to-day. I knew that I 
should address practical farmers; men whose hands are familiar with 
the plough and the pitch-fork, though they cultivate their own land ; 
who know something more of the soil and its crops than by paying 
for the labor of others; who know what earth means, what grass 
and grain mean, by actual work, the only way of getting real know- 
ledge of anything. Men who are in contact with the reality, who 
are engaged in the hand to hand struggle with nature, to subdue her, 
to find out her secrets, to make her forces their servants, and her 
wealth their inheritance. There is an old proverb which says, "The 
roof fights with the storm, but those below know not of it." The 
comfort, the elegance, the luxury of life come out of the land. 
They are brought out of it by the labors of the farmer. What those 
labors are, you know well enough. But those who dwell in towns, 
who fare sumptuously and go richly clad every day, who accept as a 



matter of course, as if they grew spontaneously, the abundant meals, 
the woollen and cotton cloths, the rich carpets and beautiful stuffs 
that adorn their homes, they do not understand so well how it is 
that they enjoy these things. How much hard work is necessary, 
how much wet work, hot work and cold work, to fill the shops and 
markets of a great city. They are like the cabin passengers in a 
steamer, who lie luxuriously on their sofas, without thinking much 
of the engineers, the firemen and stokers and sailors who bear the 
heat of the furnace and face the tempest. Yet but for these, the 
passengers would have no cabin to lie in, would not indeed be at 
sea at all. 

Work — yes, there is a good deal of hard work on a farm. But it 
is pleasant, manly, healthy work in the open air, in the free fields 
and woods, amid the beautiful scenes of nature. Labor is the prime- 
val curse and the necessity for labor, the inexorable condition of 
humanity, to toil to live, has its bitter aspect. But without this 
necessity there would be no labor nor any of its beautiful and noble 
results. Where nature is prodigal, man is idle, as in tropical cli- 
mates, where the people live in savage indolence, content with the 
supply of their animal wants, obtained without toil. Out of this 
curse of labor therefore springs a blessing to temper its hardship. 
Who would wish to live without work, work of the hand or work of 
the brain '( What a dull thing would be an idle world. It is not 
idleness that society requires, but plenty of well rewarded work for 
all its members and the ideal state for a civilized people, is that in 
which diversified occupation is furnished for every sort of talent, in 
all spheres of effort, from the humblest hewer of wood or digger of 
the soil, who has nothing but his body to work with, up to the artist, 
the philosopher and the poet, who give to life its highest dignity and 
charm, by the discovery of truth and the creation of beauty. Labor 
is its own reward. There is the reward not merely of bread or 
profit, but pleasure in the work itself; pleasure in action, pleasure 
in the result, the thing done. The higher the labor, the more 
important is the result and the greater the enjoyment. Intellectual 
work is the most delightful, and its productions the most precious. 
Just so much ;is the mind labors with the body is the dignity and 
pleasure of labor increased and its achievements enhanced in value. 



As society advances, labor becomes more and more blended with 
thought and knowledge, and we see the effects of this union in the 
triumphs of industrial art which distinguish the present time ; in the 
steamer, the railway, the telegraph, and the machinery that works 
for us with the strength of millions of men. The present condition 
of the world is founded on science and its results. Civilized society 
rests upon machinery and the knowledge that made it, and if de- 
prived of these, would soon return to barbarism. 

In no department of industry is the value of scientific knowledge 
and improved machinery more apparent than in agriculture. When 
farming was ignorant and rude, so were farmers. They worked with 
the body only, and that sort of work could not supply even their 
physical wants. They were clowns. Their houses were hovels, their 
food was coarse, unwholesome and scanty, their raiment scarcely 
sufficed for warmth, did not suffice for decency and cleanliness. The 
earth refused to give them her riches, gave them a bare support, 
wrung from her with incessant and cheerless toil. The farmer was 
a slave, the victim of the priest and the soldier, and in some of the 
wealthiest parts of Europe, where now the land is covered with abun- 
dant crops and the abodes of wealth and refinement, a wretched and 
barbarous population could scarcely subsist. 

It is not however only in rude and ignorant times that agriculture 
is rude and ignorant. Various causes may depress it below the level 
of the rest of the people, and farms and farmers may be poor and 
wretched, whilst wealth glitters in courts and capitals, and armies 
return from fields of battle with flags of victory. An eminent writer 
thus describes the country population in France in the beginning 
of the last century, the brilliant age of Louis IV. "We behold, 
throughout the country," said La Bruyere, "a set of ferocious look- 
ing creatures, both male and female, dark, livid and scorched by the 
sun, bound to the land where they dig and grub with untiring per- 
tinacity : their voice has a resemblance to that of man, and when 
they rise on their feet they exhibit a human countenance ; they are 
in fact men. At night they retire to dens where they live on black 
bread, water and roots." Do you recognize this picture ? Is there 
anything like it in Montgomery County, in Pennsylvania ? Yet 



this was the condition of the agricultural population of France a 
little more thao one hundred years ago, at a period too of national 
glory, of victory and power, of luxury and refinement, of literature, 
art and commerce. And why were farmers and farming thus igno- 
rant and poor, untouched hy the progress around them ? The reason 
is told in one word, — centralization. The wealth of the country 
went to the city, and was there spent and consumed. It went to 
maintain armies and war, and was wasted. It did not go back to 
the country in any shape. All that rough labor could produce from 
an exhausted soil was necessary to support the unproductive splendor 
of the court and the unproductive employment of the army. The 
artisans and manufacturers of France, whose skill and industry 
would have contributed more than its commerce to the improvement 
of the soil, were banished by the tyrannical revocation of the edict 
of Nantes. Centralized power had destroyed liberty, 'centralized 
consumption and expenditure had produced poverty. Population 
diminished, the land became poorer and poorer, farms were let at 
twenty cents per acre, starvation spread through the country, and a 
cotemporary writer thus speaks of it in 1739: — "We have the pre 
sent certainty that misery has become general to an unheard of 
degree. While I write, in the midst of a profound peace, with indi- 
cations of an average harvest, men are dying around us like flies of 
want and eating grass. Distress is advancing towards Versailles. 
The Duke of Orleans lately laid before the council a piece of bread, 
made of ferns. In placing it on the King's table, he said : " Sire, 
here is what your subjects live upon." 

It had not always been so in France. A hundred years before, 
though farming was rude, the land was far more productive, and the 
rural population more prosperous and happy. The reason was that 
then the nobility lived on their estates, and spent their incomes in 
the country. Centralization had not commenced. The wealth pro- 
duoed by the soil was returned to it in manure, in planting, in 
building, and agricultural improvement; it was not all drawn to one 
distant point, to feed the lavish luxury of the Court and the 
metropolis. 

At all periods the agriculture of England has been far superior to 
that of France, though France has a better soil and a mure pro- 



pitious climate. Both the soil and climate of England are unfavor- 
able to the cereals, yet the production per acre there, is and always 
has been, greater than in France ; and so, also, of grass, cattle and 
sheep. The farmers and peasantry have lived better, and at no 
time did their condition approach the abyss of misery and degrada- 
tion, which for long periods existed in France. The reason is, that 
centralization, either of power or consumption, has never destroyed 
the liberty, or exhausted the land of England. The proprietors of 
the soil have always lived on the soil. The love of the land, of the 
free, solitary life of the farm and the forest, is a characteristic of 
the English race, and has from the earliest ages drawn to the 
country, not wealth only, but intellect and knowledge. It was so in 
the feudal times, when England was covered with castles and monas- 
teries. Priests and nobles resided on their estates. There was no 
Richelieu to break down their power and bring them to the depen- 
dence and corrupting atmosphere of the Court. It was so when the 
Baronial Hall and the mansion of the country geDtleman, succeeded 
to the feudal castle, and so it has been ever since. The wealth of 
the aristocracy and gentry has been spent in the country, and has 
thus gone back to enrich the soil whence it came. English agricul- 
ture has shared in English prosperity, and from the time when 
William the Conqueror, recorded in Doomsday-Book, the distribu- 
tion of the land among his followers, the land and the farmer 
and the peasant, have maintained their place, and grown with 
the growth of the nation. The reason is, the land was never 
without an owner who was not a mere owner, but a friend and 
protector, who loved and cherished it, and devoted to it his labor 
and thought and wealth. 

In the early periods of English history, however, agriculture was 
rude enough. So late as the time of Elizabeth, three-fourths of the 
land was uncultivated, the product was small, the implements ineffi- 
cient, and the life and habits of the farmer, coarse and unaccommo- 
dated. The progress was slow till the end of the last century, till 
the time of Arthur Young and Bakewell and Ellman, till the intro- 
duction of the turnip crop, and the improved breeds of sheep and 
cattle. Since then the advance has been rapid, until the present 
day of steam machinery and under-draining, of short horns and 



8 

Ayrshire*, of Leicesters and Southdowns, and thorough tillage; 
when, as Mr. Emerson says in his English Traits, "a cold, barren, 
almost arctic isle, has been made the most fruitful, luxurious and 
imperial land in the whole earth." 

Several causes have contributed to produce that very grand and 
remarkable phenomenon of this century — English agriculture ; 
causes inherent and external, causes in the past and the present. 
The insular position of England and her consequent freedom from 
the ravages of invasion, so that the island has become a store-house, 
filled with the accumulated treasure of ages ; the freedom of her 
government, securing the rights of property and preserving her 
from the destructive fury of civil discord ; the passion of the 
English race for rural domestic life, which has scattered homes 
throughout the country, and led to the expenditure of wealth in the 
improvement and embellishment of the soil ; the constitution, custom 
and law of English landed property, founded in the feudal system, 
and modified by the requirements of modern society, which has 
given to the land two owners, two care-takers and friends, the land- 
lord and the tenant, thus securing the application of knowledge and 
capital, and combining union of interest with division of labor ; 
these are the chief influences which have affected agriculture. They 
are, however, general causes, and have all united to produce one 
proximate cause, without which, they would have been powerless, 
and that is, local markets, the very opposite of centralization, by 
which French agriculture has been retarded, and at times well nigh 
destroyed. 

The many-sided genius of the English race has not been success- 
ful in agriculture only. It has also created manufactures and 
commerce, which receive tribute from all the world, and pour its 
riches on their little island. The English love the land, but they 
love also the sea, the ship, the workshop, the loom, the steam 
engine, and by the use of these tools, they have woven a net-work 
of relations and dependencies over the earth, and at every haul of 
this mighty seine, they bring to their shores materials for their 
industry and wealth incalculable, and all the wealth is lavished on 
the land. London is a great eity. It has two and a half millions 
of inhabitants. It is the centre of the commerce and finance of the 



9 

world. All interests tend to it and diverge from it. It is the seat 
of activity and grandeur and wealth unparalleled in any former age, 
not excepting Rome itself when at the height of its power. Yet 
London is not a central point in England in any sense, social, 
political or economical. It does not merely absorb and consume, 
like Paris. What it receives from the country it gives back again 
with usurious interest. What it receives from other nations it pours 
out over the country in fertilizing streams. London has royal 
palaces, but the Queen does not live in London. She lives in 
the country, where she also has palaces and farms. The aristocracy 
do not live in London ; they go there for a few months during the 
session of Parliament. They live on their estates, and spend their 
incomes on them. The rich merchants do not live in London. 
They make money there, and the first thing they do with it, is 
to buy land to cultivate and adorn as a home for themselves and 
their children. The very tradesmen and shop-keepers and attorneys 
have imbibed the same spirit. As soon as they are able, they leave 
the streets for some suburban cottage or villa, more or less remote 
from the great city. Even the rents of London go to improve the 
soil. A great part of the land on which the town is built, is owned 
by a few noblemen, and the immense incomes thence derived are 
spent in the country, in building, planting, gardening, draining, and 
cultivating the soil. Thence Woburn Abbey, Chatsworth, Eaton 
Hall, and thousands of similar places. The over-arching grandeur 
of London is like the English sky, which draws up moisture from sea 
and land to pour it down again in constant and refreshing showers. 
London, therefore, if a great receiver, is a great distributor, and 
is in this respect a type of all the towns and cities in England. 
English agriculture did not grow from its own resources. No 
agriculture can. It has its roots in the rich soil of manufactures, 
and a commerce employed in exporting the productions of manufac- 
tures, and bringing home wealth to the land. A foreign trade that 
sends away raw material, is the bane of agriculture. It acts upon it 
as centralization acted on France. It takes away the richness of the 
soil and returns nothing to the soil. The foundation, the essential 
condition of all agricultural improvement is manure. This can 
be supplied only by local markets, that is to say, by manufactures. 



10 

Arkwright and Watt did more for English agriculture than Bakewell 
and Arthur Young. Their inventions, and Whitney's cotton gin, by 
the vast and sudden increase of power they gave to manufactures, 
created indeed the present agriculture of England, because they 
filled the island with mills, mines and workshops, with populous and 
busy villages and towns. Everywhere throughout the kingdom, 
these are scattered among the farms, and contrast the smoke of 
furnaces, the din of machinery, the swarms of laborers, with the 
beauty and peaceful seclusion of parks and lawns. Everywhere, 
therefore, the farmer finds a market close to his farm, for those 
things, the cultivation of which enriches the land. The vast sums 
paid by the manufacturer for wages, the farmer receives, not 
for grain merely, but for meat, butter, milk, cheese, vegetables, all 
of them sources of manure. The refuse of the factories is also 
manure. Dispersed among the farmers in all directions, live a more 
numerous class which they must feed, which does not produce food 
for itself, but which clothes them, builds their houses and barns, and 
makes their tools of labor, in return for food. Out of this proximity 
grows that rapid exchange which stimulates activity and saves the 
loss and waste of transportation. Because of it, too, the farmer is 
enabled to grow with profit those articles that produce manure, and 
which cannot be transported to a distance. In the local demand for 
those articles, lies the secret of the success of English agriculture. 
Its aim is to feed a population of which one-tenth only are producers 
of food. Now the chief food of this population is wheat bread, the 
chief drink, beer. To raise wheat and barley, therefore, in con- 
stantly increasing quantity, from a cold, wet, barren soil, unfavor- 
able for the growth of either, to supply a constantly increasing 
demand, is the task set for English farmers. They have done 
wonders. They have brought the average production of wheat from 
fifteen to twenty-eight bushels, and on the best farms, to forty and 
fifty bushels per acre, and the increase in the number and weight of 
cattle and sheep is still greater How has this been*accomplished ? 
By manure. One-fifth of the land only is devoted to grain, four- 
fifths to crops that produce nnanure. Now, as you know, grain crops 
derive their chief nutriment from the soil, and therefore exhaust it. 
Forage crops on the contrary, obtain their food from the atmosphere, 



11 

and if returned to the soil, enrich it. This principle is the founda- 
tion of the celebrated Norfolk rotation, by which every grain crop is 
succeeded by a forage crop, which latter is fed to cattle or sheep. 
According to this system which prevails in the grain-growing dis- 
tricts, one-half the farm is laid down in permanent natural pasture. 
The other half is divided into five fields, and the rotation is, 1st. 
turnips and potatoes, a large portion of the former fed to sheep on 
the ground without digging; 2d. barley or oats; 3d. and 4th. 
clover and artificial grasses ; 5th. wheat ; so that on a farm of one 
hundred acres, twenty only are in grain, whilst the remaining eighty . 
are devoted to crops which supply manure. But this system is pos- 
sible only where there is a ready sale for the articles which these 
crops produce, for meat, milk, butter, cheese and vegetables. The 
local markets created by manufactures, therefore, are the sources of 
the manure that enriches the English soil. 

The manure of sheep and cattle however is by no means the only 
resource. Lime, piaster, salt, ashes, guano, nitrate of soda, bone 
dust, and every other fertilizing substance are eagerly sought and 
applied. Nor are the crops grown on the farm the only food of 
cattle, but linseed meal, brewers' grains, bran, our Indian corn and 
cotton seed, are largely consumed and go to swell the manure heap. 
High profits enable the farmers to buy these substances and to com- 
bine with their operation, minute cultivation, under-draining, labor- 
saving machinery and commodious buildings. The amount thus 
jointly expended by landlord and tenant is enormous, as you may 
judge from the single fact, that the capital considered necessary for 
a tenant to possess on entering a good farm is fifty dollars per acre. 
The manufactures of England which thus enrich its soil, sustain 
also a world-wide commerce, which, employed as it is, in exporting 
the manfactured article and importing raw material, conduces to the 
same end. The most remote corners of the earth are also searched 
for seeds, plants, trees, animals and manures. Her ships go about 
the world like bees, catering for the land, and return laden with the 
productions of every clime. They bring horses from Arabia, sheep 
from Spain, poultry from China and Japan, bones, linseed and cotton 
seed cake from America, and guano from the Pacific. They bring 
also food, which even English agriculture is not able to supply in 



12 

sufficient quantity for the people. Their little is.and is not big 
enough for them, but like a busy hive sends forth annual swarms 
into our own country, into Canada, Australia and India, thus belting 
the earth with the arts, the laws, the literature and the free institu- 
tions of England, and sowing broad-cast over distant continents this 
victorious race, which in times' past has borne such fruit as Alfred 
and Raleigh, Cecil and Sidney ; as Marlborough, Nelson and Wel- 
lington ; as Bacon, Locke and Taylor ; as Spenser, Herbert, Milton 
and Shakspeare. A race which Mr. Emerson has well described as 
."moulded for law, lawful trade, civility, marriage, the nurture of 
children, for colleges, churches, charities and colonies." Mr. Caird, 
an eminent authority, in his late work on "Prairie Farming in 
America," says, that during the last twenty-five years, the propor- 
tion of the adult population of England employed in agriculture has 
fallen from twenty-eight to ten per cent., not from any decrease of 
the numbers engaged in agriculture, but from the far greater propor- 
tional increase of trade. During the year 1857, grain was imported 
into England at the rate of nearly one million of quarters per month. 
England has thus, says the same writer, in addition to the home 
crop, consumed each day, the produce of ten thousand acres of foreign 
land. All this grain is food for men and animals. It is therefore 
so much manure. It helps also to support manufactures, which 
create a home market for the farmer. Though this dependence of 
England on foreign supplies of food is not without its dangers, I 
think you will agree with me that it is better to receive it than to 
send it away. 

Thus we see how this mighty growth of commerce and manufac- 
tures protects the land, like a stately' forest, adding annually to its 
own mass of stem and branch, dropping annually also its leaves upon 
the soil in which its roots live and find nourishment. We sir ho* 
agriculture, manufactures and commerce, work harmoniously together, 
sustaining and nourishing each Other, and that the best fertilizer is a 
home market, which brings the mill, the mine and the furnace to the 
side of the farmer. 

Let us now turn to our own agriculture, and give a glance at its 
condition and prospects. It is obvious at once that there are many 



13 

points of difference between it and the agriculture of England. We 
have a territory of vast extent, whilst that of England is small. 
Small as it is, but a limited portion of it is fit for the production of 
grain, whilst large as ours is, almost all of it will produce grain, and 
very much is peculiarly adapted to its culture. 

Another difference is, that in England the population is dense, 
overflowing indeed, yet only one-tenth part of it is agricultural. 
Here, on the contrary, the people are thinly scattered over a wide 
surface. Between the various settlements lie great tracts of wild 
land or unbroken forest. In many places extensive regions are 
occupied exclusively by farmers or planters. Along the Atlantic 
Coast are a few large and flourishing cities and many growing 
towns, some of them engaged in manufactures, but depending for 
the most part on the profits of sending the grain, cotton and other 
produce of our soil to Europe, and bringing back the results of 
European industry. In the West, along the highways of the Lakes, 
the Mississippi, the Ohio and other rivers, cities and villages have 
grown up with astonishing rapidity. These are connected by the 
lakes and rivers and by railroads with the sea-board, and all of them, 
cities, towns, lakes, rivers and railroads are eagerly employed in the 
great business of sending cotton, corn and wheat to the sea-ports of 
the East, and of distributing through the West the productions of 
the looms and workshops of Europe. This is their principal business, 
and they thrive on it. Every year new towns, railroads and steam- 
boats are built. The Atlantic cities thrive on it too. New York 
grows in opulence and splendor, Philadelphia pushes annually her 
squares of new streets into the country, and the others are equally 
prosperous. Of our whole population, about three-fourths are en- 
gaged in agriculture. Of the remaining fourth, a part is employed 
in manufactures and the mechanic arts, and another part, much the 
richer, if not the more numerous, is engaged in trade, and that trade 
consists in transporting raw material, chiefly grain and cotton to 
Europe, and bringing it back again in the shape of manufactured 
goods, its business being precisely the reverse of the commerce of 
England, which brings from all parts of the world, raw material and 
food, to give support and employment to her manufactures, and this 



14 

done, sends it forth again, a large value in small bulk, to be 
exchanged for more food and more material. 

Another difference between this country and England affecting 
our agriculture is, that there, as already mentioned, the wealthy 
classes live in the country, whilst here they live in the towns. We 
have no class at all corresponding to the large proprietors of 
England, who own domains of many thousand acres, who employ 
vast sums in the improvement of the soil, who spend princely 
incomes in their luxurious country palaces, and who combine for the 
advancement of agriculture, with their own wealth and superin- 
tendence, the energy, the skill and the capital of an intelligent and 
rich tenantry. 

Such is a general view of the circumstances which influence our 
agriculture as compared with that of England, and they are sufficient 
to explain the difference between the two. We see at once that all 
the causes affeecting us, extent of territory, a scattered people, 
chiefly farmers, towns and cities at wide intervals, chiefly commer- 
cial, rivers and railroads, instruments of commerce and individual 
wealth clustered in and around the seats of commerce, resolve them- 
selves into one great, pervading cause — a distant market for the 
produce of the land. And this again being translated, means want 
of manure. I do not mean merely lime, plaster, guano, bone-dust, 
and other fertilizing substances that may be carried on rivers and 
railroads, but manure made on the farm, the manure of the barn- 
yard, to which the former are merely auxiliary, and without which 
they do more harm than good. We are deficient in one of the three 
great departments of industry essential to the solid prosperity of a 
nation. We have in our soil and climate the foundations of a vast 
and varied agriculture. We have a large and ever-growing trade, 
foreign and domestic, but that trade being employed in transporting 
to the sea-board and to Europe, crops that exhaust the soil, is 
gradually accumulating to itself the wealth of the land. England 
demands our cotton and grain, the great Atlantic and inland cities 
demand them, ability and wealth flock to the cities, which constantly 
increase in size and splendor, and extend far and wide over the 
country their radiating lines of railroads, opening new markets, we 



15 

are told, to the farmer, but drawing from the land its fertility, and 
returning nothing to the land. Sending its carbonates and phos- 
phates, and ammonia, to enrich the soil of England. Even the 
sheep and cattle that supply our great cities, add comparatively 
little to the fertility of our farms. They are fed for the most part, 
the sheep on hills and in regions unsuitable for grain, the cattle on 
the permanent blue grass pastures of the West, and on the bound- 
less ranges of the prairies, where the land costs nothing, where food 
for one half the year costs nothing, and for the other half, merely 
the labor of cutting the grass. Many thousands of them are 
actually fattened on the road to market. Do we not see in this, 
that fatal centralization of wealth caused by a distant market which 
impoverished the agriculture of France ? Paris drew from the 
French soil its wealth, and returned nothing to it. England and 
our cities are doing the same thing for us, over regions much larger 
than France, and more fertile. I cannot illustrate this process of 
exhaustion better than by an extract from the work of Mr. Caird, 
already mentioned : 

" The valley of the Mississippi above Cairo, comprising Illinois, 
Wisconsin, Missouri, Iowa, and Minnesota, embraces probably the 
greatest tract of fertile land on the globe. Its total extent exceeds 
England and France together with the kingdom of the two Sicilies ; 
it is more than equal to Prussia and the whole Austrian empire. 
This vast territory is not only intersected by numerous lines of rail- 
roads which give it direct access to Montreal, New York and Phila- 
delphia, but on the north by means of the lakes and the St. 
Lawrence, and on the south by the Mississippi river, it possesses a 
continuous water communication with the Atlantic. Nothing can 
illustrate more forcibly the vast natural resources of this splendid 
country, than the history of the grain trade of Chicago. An Indian 
village in 1820, this place has become a great city, with upwards of 
120,000 people, with wharves and granaries for miles along the river, 
and with streets, public buildings and churches, that may vie with 
those of London itself. Chicago is actually the centre of more miles 
of railway completed and in operation, than London. Yet it is only 
twenty years since the first shipment of some forty bags of wheat 
was made from it, and in 1857 its exports amounted to 18,000,000 



1G 

of bushels. Chicago and all its wealth are in fact a property 
created by profits arising in the mere transference from hand to 
hand of the surplus produce of but a small part of this wonderful 
country. Looking to Illinois alone, of which Chicago is the 
commercial capital and outlet, this surplus, great though it be, is 
capable of being increased ten-fold, as only one-tenth of the fertile 
lands of this State are yet brought under cultivation." 

We have here in a few pregnant sentences the whole story, and a 
very wonderful story it is, which would afford matter for a longer 
speech than I shall trouble you with, indeed for a volume. Add to 
Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Detroit, Buffalo, Milwaukic, and 
other inland towns; add also, New York, Boston, Baltimore, Mobile, 
New Orleans, and in a less degree, Philadelphia, which have all grown 
and are growing rich from " the profits arising in the mere transfer- 
ence from hand to hand," of the produce of the soil, add to these, 
also, the enormous capital invested in railroads and steamboats, and 
you have a combination of the causes operating upon our agricul- 
ture. Now what are they doing? Taking out of the land its 
fertility, and sending it away at the rate of millions of bushels 
annually. Is the land improved by this process ? It is well known 
that it is growing poorer every day. It must become poorer, and 
the result must be precisely that which has happened, the produce 
per acre of grain constantly diminishing because of the exhaustion 
of the soil, the gross amount constantly increasing because of new 
lands brought annually into cultivation. New railroads are every 
day extending their long arms further west, to reach the ever 
receding horizon of new land, to bring it into market, to feed fat 
with its produce, our trade and the manufactures of England. The 
government gives away this virgin soil at a nominal price, alluring 
settlers to it, scattering the population over still widening spaces, 
weakening its energies by dispersion, adding ever to the cost of 
transportation, and leading on and on to a farther west and to the 
Pacific, the van of this great army of farmers, which like other 
armies, but unlike most other farmers, finds before it fertility, and 
leaves behind it desolation. It is a remarkable and significant fact, 
that whilst the wheat crop of England has increased during the last 
twenty years from fifteen to thirty bushels per acre, it has in Ohio 



17 

diminished from thirty to fifteen. It is more profitable for the owner 
of a worn-out farm, to abandon it and take up new land from the 
government, the price of which he can pay by the first crop of wheat 
he grows, than to remain where he is. He must do this or improve 
his old farm, and how can he improve it without manure? No 
Norfolk rotation is possible for him. He cannot sell butter or milk 
or cheese or vegetables. He cannot send these to New York or to 
England. He cannot feed cattle, for his exhausted soil cannot com- 
pete with the prairie. A slow and expensive process is necessary 
before cattle would pay as well as even his diminished grain crops, 
and "while the grass grows the steed starves." And he too, must 
starve, if he remains on his farm. He therefore leaves it and the 
associations of home, and the friends of youth, for the great West, 
there to exhaust more land. This process explains the rapid forma- 
tion of new States, and what is called the wonderful prosperity of 
the West, that is to say, the rapid rise of rich towns and rich rail- 
road companies, founded on the toils and privations of the farmers, 
who are called the adventurous and hardy pioneers of civilization. 
It explains also the stagnation and decay of some of the old States, 
all of them indeed where manufactures have not been introduced — 
the " old fields" of Maryland and Virginia and Kentucky, the 
steady decrease in the productiveness of Ohio and Western New 
York, and the deserted plantations of Georgia and the Carolinas. 
Deserts are forming in many parts of our wide interior, by reason of 
the same cause which produced deserts in the heart of France, which 
has reduced to poverty the country on the Danube and the Black 
Sea, whence England, too, draws food for her people, and manure 
for her land ; which has exhausted and impoverished India, from 
which England takes cotton as she does from us, to be returned 
again as cloth, leaving behind it the stimulated ingenuity, the 
employed labor, the create^ value, and the manure, of which it was 
the source. 

It is a wonderful and ingenious operation, this, by which far- 
sighted and politic England manages to extract from all countries 
that will permit it, their richness, leaving to them the husks and 
chaff. A farmer of Illinois wishes to get a piece of cotton goods: 
he takes his wheat or corn to Chicago, and thence paying toll and 

9 



18 

profits to railroads, merchants and ship-owners by the way, it is sent 
to England. It is there exchanged for cloth made in England out of 
cotton sent all the way from Mississippi, to supply a similar want of 
a planter. The piece of cloth comes back again to Mississippi, or 
goes to Illinois, the grain that bought it having made a journey of 
several thousand miles, and the cotton of which it was made, two 
journeys, at vast cost and labor. Now a plain man would think it a 
simpler way to make the cloth at once in Mississippi, or to send the 
cotton the shorter distance, to Illinois, and there make it into cloth. 
It would save a great deal of trouble, and it would also give both to 
farmer and planter, a market where they could sell not only their 
cotton and grain, but crops also as profitable, now unsalable, and 
which would manure their land. This to be sure, would not be of 
much importance to the farmers of Illinois whilst their soil is yet 
unexhausted, but if such markets could be established in Virginia, 
Maryland, Ohio, Kentucky, and Western New York, which bore 
once the same relation to England and the East, that Illinois now 
does, the Norfolk rotation would become immediately possible for 
them, and fertility would return to their worn-out fields. 

But for these boundless tracts of new land, instead of a rich, we 
should under this system have become a poor people. Our com- 
merce has been fed by new land, which it has constantly exhausted. 
Our wealth is concentrated in the sea-ports and the inland cities 
along the rivers and railroads, and the land immediately surround- 
ing these and the few manufacturing establishments that do exist. 
There only, agriculture flourishes, the produce per acre increases, a 
variety of crops are grown, rural taste and embellishment appear, 
the land rises in value, and farmers surround themselves with the 
comforts and refinements of life, because there alone are local 
markets and sources of fertility. 

It is said in reply to all this, that foreign skill and labor work for 
us at a lower price than our own, and it is cheaper and therefore 
wiser, to get from abroad the comforts and luxuries it produces. 
We have cotton and wool and coal and iron here, and labor asking 
employment ; nevertheless, we are told, it is better to get cotton and 
woolen goods and iron wares from abroad, because they do not cost 
so much money. But do we pay nothing for these things but 



19 

money ? Do we not pay also the fertility of our soil ? Do we not 
pay the stagnation and monotony of our industry ? Are cotton and 
wool of use only for cloth, coal to burn, iron to make plough-shares 
and railroad tracks? Have they no relations to man's higher 
nature in the labor and strength of mind and body they require 
and develope, and are not these, once excited to effort, the prolific 
causes of production, of wealth? Has not this dead matter the 
virtue of tasking man's powers, and thus increasing his intellectual 
force ; of gathering together communities and forming social ties, 
thus furnishing that variety, collision and emulation of pursuits, 
topics and interests, which open a sphere and a reward to every 
talent ? And is not this civilization? Is it not the source of wealth 
and refinement, of literature and art, of all that increases comfort 
and ease, and the pleasures of intellect and taste ? Is not this the 
civilization of England and the best parts of Europe and America, 
or will you seek it among the scattered and lonely farms of the 
Mississippi valley, the log cabins of the West, the exhausted planta- 
tions of the South, or on the banks of the Danube or the Black or 
the Baltic Sea ? 

There is, however, one consolation under these circumstances, that 
with all this land, we are in no danger of starvation. We have a 
goodly inheritance, and cannot easily be ruined even by folly and 
extravagance. There are in the great West, millions of acres yet un- 
tilled, and on the limitless prairies countless herds may roam for many 
years to come, without an enclosure. We have therefore a large 
fund yet to draw upon, to increase the number and size of our 
cities, to multiply our railroads, and after a while to set in motion 
mills, factories and furnaces. These centres of population are 
markets for the farmer, and if every year they draw more and more 
wealth from distant land, they every year also increase the area of 
improved land around them, by the demand they create for the crops 
that supply manure. Our manufactures, after a long struggle, have 
obtained a foothold, and causes are in operation at home and abroad, 
to secure for them a sure progress, if a slow one. The number of 
the people engaged in other pursuits than agriculture, steadily 
increases, and this, combined with the diminishing crops from 
western land in cultivation, and the lengthening distances that 



20 

must be traversed to reach new land, favor the farmers of the Atlan- 
tic States. The increase of our crops, more especially of wheat, 
does not keep pace with the increase of our population. Prices of 
grain are to-day high, notwithstanding a most abundant harvest and 
the absence of a foreign demand, so high that it cannot be sent 
abroad to pay for imported goods. Grain may therefore be profit- 
ably grown wherever manure can be obtained, and our soil requires 
far less manure to produce the same returns, than the soil of Eng- 
land. So that the very barrenness caused by the successive cultiva- 
tion of cheap, rich, new land, and the abandonment of the old, tells 
in favor of agriculture here, and manufactures are slowly but 
steadily following in the track of a reckless and improvident com- 
merce, to renovate the wastes it has made. Wealth is stored up for' 
the future in the land of the Atlantic States, just as it is in their 
mines of coal and iron, though the fruits of both may be gathered 
by another generation. Our country has large provision for pos- 
terity, in the spaces enclosed by its gigantic outline of two oceans, 
of broad lakes and long navigable rivers. On the shores of these are 
to be set like gems, hereafter, wealthy and luxurious capitals, the 
seats of refinement and the arts, and resplendent with the achieve- 
ments of advancing science. At every favorable point, mills and 
mines will gather their busy crowds, and send forth on the rushing 
rail-car the useful and beautiful productions of ingenuity and taste. 
The tracts of fertile soil, vast as they are, around and between 
these, on this and the other side of the Alleghenies and beyond the 
great Mississippi valley, will be filled with rich farms and farmers 
and decorated estates, supporting and supported, giving and receiv- 
ing, and completing that twisted, triple cord of agriculture, manu- 
factures and commerce, which makes a nation a unit, self-sustaining 
and independent. Is this a dream of the imagination ? It is even 
now assuming definite form. It may be retarded or marred for a 
time by unwise legislation or by civil strife, but it lies in the future 
as surely and securely as New York with its Central Park and Fifth 
Avenue laid there, in the hour when Hendrick Hudson first sailed up 
the noble river that bears his name. 

I have said that a local market is a fertilizer. Before I conclude 



21 

I must mention another fertilizer, without which indeed the former 
can have no existence, I mean a good government. In a most 
interesting and instructive work by a French gentleman, M. Leonce 
de Lavergne, published in 1854, on " The Rural Economy of Great 
Britain," the author dwells with much emphasis on civil dissension 
and political misrule as causes of the depression and poverty of 
French agriculture. He speaks too with enthusiasm of the "liberty 
without revolution," under whose cherishing guardianship England 
presents such a delightful scene of rural prosperity. Liberty with- 
out revolution, — do you wonder that a Frenchman should long for 
that, should look with melancholy admiration on all nations blessed 
with it, when you think of the history of France for the last seventy 
years, during which liberty has never been obtained even by the 
bloody sacrifices of revolution, and the horrors of anarchy have ever 
been succeeded by the cold, dark, selfish, soulless, heartless tyranny 
of a Napoleon I. or a Napoleon III. Liberty without revolution, 
that is to say, with order and security, without which industry and 
the arts cannot prosper. Security for life and property, freedom of 
thought and speech and action, enjoyed in peace and tranquillity 
through long centuries, under just laws ; these, my friends, will make 
wheat grow, even on a barren soil. No wonder then that this 
generous and enlightened Frenchman should prize them when he 
saw the wheat fields of England, when he walked among the green 
hedge-rows and looked on her happy rural homes, her quiet parks 
and lawns, where no invader's foot has trod, where nothing more for- 
midable than the stafi" of a policeman has been seen for so many 
ages. No wonder, too, when he was describing those scenes of tran- 
quil industry and plenty, and thought of his native land and its rich 
resources of soil and climate, that he should quote with approbation 
the saying of another Frenchman, the wise and amiable Montesquieu, 
who declared that, "It is not fertility, but liberty which cultivates a 
country." 

It is a common saying that we never know the value of our eyes 
till sight is impaired or lost. Habitual blessings are accepted as 
things of course, without much thought about the causes on which 
they depend or the possibility of.change. We, in this country, have 
been so long accustomed to the advantages of freedom and security, 



22 

to the tranquil living under our own fig tree, that we are too apt to 
be inspired with a blind confidence that these things require of us 
nothing but to enjoy them, and that they are to last forever as our 
destiny ; like the heir of a good estate, who having been used to ease 
and comfort from childhood, often forgets that these depend on cer- 
tain lands and houses and mortgages, accumulated by the thrift and 
industry of his ancestors, which he must carefully keep or face the 
hard trials of the world like other men. The blessings of order and 
liberty are as easily lost as property, and when lost as difficult to 
regain and disastrous change in national happiness and prosperity, 
from political causes, is ever liable to occur under all governments. 
To be convinced of this, we need only look at the history of Europe 
and its present condition. The continent has been for ages and now 
is a battle ground for ambitious, jealous, wrangling nations and 
monarchs, who cannot live together in peace and harmony. Each 
has designs against the others, and therefore all must be fully armed 
and equipped for self-defence. The whole land bristles with for- 
tresses, and in every city and village is seen the uniform of the 
soldier, marking a class separated from the peaceful occupations of 
industry, its hopes and pleasures. Everywhere, mingling with the 
sounds of labor is heard the ear-piercing fife, the roll of the drum, 
calling up images of danger and bloodshed or rousing the passions 
that lead to both. Standing armies are a necessity of European 
society, and standing armies are incompatible with liberty. They 
are the tools by which despots forge the chains of a people and gratify 
their own, and too often a nation's greed for glory or gain. Created 
for protection, they lead constantly to aggressive wars to acquire 
territory or to support a dynasty or to maintain the balance of 
power, ever liable to be lost by the encroachments of the strong or 
the victories of military genius. What do we see in Europe now ? 
All nations armed to the teeth, regarding each other with suspicion 
and suppressed animosity, and one despot, an adventurer and revo- 
lutionist, flushed with recent success, the arbiter of their fortunes. 
Wielding the power of an impetuous, passionate and intellectual 
nation, holding the reins of an eager, brave and obedient army, he 
stands with his hand on a half-sheathed sword, red with recent 
battle, a threat and a danger to surrounding States, who watch 



23 

his words and looks as the oracles of their destiny. Whether 
the work of slaughter shall begin again, and the miseries and devas- 
tation of war be poured like a destroying flood over the fairest 
scenes of modern civilization, depends on the plans and purposes of 
this one reserved, scheming and brooding mind, upon the will of one 
man. He is armed, all others must therefore arm, and amid this 
universal arming and the passions it engenders, what chance is there 
that peace can be maintained. These defences are more destructive 
than even the devastations of actual conflict, terrible as they are. 
A French statistician has recently computed that the annual war 
expense paid by the producers of Europe, including the value of the 
labor withdrawn from industry, amounts to eight hundred millions 
of dollars. Think what an impulse this enormous sum thus yearly 
wasted, would give to agriculture, manufactures and commerce, to 
science and art. How much land it would drain and irrigate and 
plough and plant. How many mills it would set in motion, how 
many ships it would send around the world to diffuse among all 
countries the gifts and productions peculiar to each. Think, too, of 
the terrible conscription by which these immense armies are mam- 
tained, tearing the young from home and its affections, from all useful 
and profitable pursuits, and of the narrow and barren lives of all 
these soldiers, condemned to the daily drill and slavish routine of a 
camp, that they may be converted into human engines of destruction 
and take rank in the estimation of despots, with improved cannon 
and Minie rifles, as instruments wherewith to play the royal game of 
war. Add to these evils the scenes necessarily caused by all this 
costly preparation ; the wasting march of troops, the sack of cities, 
the burning of villages, the wide license given to rapine and violence, 
and it is obvious that the balance of power in Europe is an expensive 
thing, in value wasted and destroyed, in production prevented, and 
in ruined hopes and happiness. 

Now whence arises the necessity for this balance of power, this 
equipoise of strength, so that one nation may not endanger the 
safety of others ; together with all the treaties, alliances, diplomacy, 
intrigues and wars of which it is the source. It arises from the 
political separation and close neighborhood of different nationalities 
and races. It is caused by the want of that union which we possess ; 



24 

of political union under one government ; of common interests and 
hopes, purposes and destiny. Of union, not centralization ; of 
authority emanating from all and controlling all where the interests 
of the whole arc concerned, but acting harmoniously with separate 
and independent authority, exercised on local interests and objects. 
Were it possible to give to Europe a Federal Union, combined with 
State Sovereignty like ours, its thrones and despots and armies and 
wars would vanish like phantoms of the night. Destroy our union, 
and thrones, despots, armies and wars would arise, like evil spirits 
summoned by an avenging angel. The Union is the golden chain 
that links our cup to perennial fountains of peace and power, of 
wealth and greatness. But disunion ; 

" The children born of it are fire and sword, 
Red union and the breaking up of laws." 

Liberty without revolution, — Lavergne has well said that this is the 
thing needed for the land of France. It is needed for our land too, 
for what is disunion but revolution, and where would liberty find a 
refuge on our soil, if the Union were destroyed. It is a better fer- 
tilizer than even barn-yard manure, a more efficient machine than 
Hussey's Reaper or Fawk's Steam Plough. 

The people of Massachusetts have recently erected with appro- 
priate ceremonial a bronze statue of Daniel Webster, in order that 
succeeding generations may be as familiar as this which is passing 
away, with the form and features of a man who did good service to 
New England and his country, and conferred honor on both. His 
speeches and writings will go down to those generations. They will 
become acquainted with his mind and his thoughts. It will be a 
pleasant thing for them to see, so far as the artist can make them 
see, what manner of man he was in outward show. Daniel Webster 
was one of those rare productions of nature called a great man. 
Great men are not needed for the common purposes of the world, 
and therefore are not so plentiful as good mechanics, lawyers, finan- 
ciers and farmers. Webster had two qualities which distinguished 
him from the crowd of politicians who manage the ordinary business 
of the public. lie had an intellect able to perceive the great truths 
or laws which rule the destinies of a nation. He could see also 



25 

that these truths are commands and disregarding the subordinate 
and the expedient, the schemes and intrigues of parties and sections, 
he called with a voice of power on all men, to follow the truth and 
obey it. He had also a soul that could grasp great things, and dis- 
dain small ones. The nation, and not a part of it — its future, with 
all its mighty hopes, not partisan purposes, the returns of the last 
election or the chances of the next, were the interests that spurred 
his ambition and roused his powers. There was nothing petty about 
him. The proportions of his mind were grand and massy, like his 
own granite hills, and his eloquence was simple and strong, but rich 
and full, as the tones of an organ. In harmony with these great 
qualities of Webster, was his love for nature, and for a farm and a 
farmer's life. He was the son of a working farmer, and had many 
a hard struggle with fortune before he stood in the Senate the 
victorious champion of the Constitution — before he reached the fame 
which fixed upon him the gazes of all men wherever he appeared. 
He loved the farm, its labors and simple pleasures, and the farmer, 
too, and clasped the brown hand of toil with the cordiality of a 
brother. No one here can look with a more appreciating eye than 
he did, on a field of grain or a yoke of cattle. He was prouder 
of his crops than of his speeches, and preferred in his heart, his 
triumphs at Marshfield, to his glories in the Senate. He had his 
faults, and grave ones. We must admit this with sorrow, for the 
memory of the great men of a country is a precious inheritance, 
and we would have them without blemish or stain, if we could. We 
must take them, however, as they are sent, and our regret for their 
weakness and failings, need not hinder our love and reverence for 
what of good and noble they possessed. Imperfections and short- 
comings are common enough, but great talents, great purposes, 
great public services, are not common, and when the character 
of W T ebster, with its look and lineaments and attitude of nobility 
and power, rise before my mind, I for one, would rather turn 
from its feet of clay, to gaze upon its towering and majestic 
head. 

Like all great men Webster had a mission. His career and labors 
had a meaning and object. And what were they ? The idea which 
guided his life, which runs through all his public acts, and on which 



26 

his speeches were strung like gems, was, that this country is one 
nation ; that its people are one people ; not separate nations or a 
divided people. One people and one nation, living under a Constitu- 
tion wisely and justly framed to establish civil rights and republican 
liberty, for them and their posterity forever. This was the meaning 
of Webster's public life- He was the expounder and defender of the 
Constitution, he represented the idea of nationality. He did not 
represent the North or the South, the East or the West, but the 
Union. When we think of what this country is, of its range of 
climate and soil from the Tropics to the Northern Lakes, from the 
Atlantic to the Pacific. When we think of its possible future, of 
that vast area covered with cities and towns and farms and planta- 
tions, and all the triumphs and wealth of advancing civilization. 
When we think of it as one nation, a great empire, a united people, 
living in peace under one government and equal laws, when we try 
to imagine this as something that is to be, that can be if wisdom and 
will be not wanting, was it not a grand and glorious idea, worth living 
for and worth dying for? It was the ruling idea of Webster's life. 
To realize this glorious vision, he thought and toiled and spoke as 
few men of his day or any other day could speak. It was his 
life-purpose, and he gave to it the strength of his life and the prime 
of his days. Therefore he is justly called a great man, and the peo- 
ple of Boston when they set up his statue in their city, paid him a 
merited homage and honored themselves. 

I came here to speak to farmers about farming, and I hope no 
one will think I have wandered from my subject when I allude to 
Daniel Webster and the work he set himself to do. That work, if 
it can be accomplished by those who succeed him, has intimate and 
important relations with farms and farmers and their prosperity. 
It is for that reason I have spoken of Webster and his great task, 
and not forgetting either my topic or my audience, I think I cannot 
better finish my little speech than by the concluding words and 
sentiment of his greatest speech, — "Liberty and Union, now and 
forever, one and inseparable." 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

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